The first 6 months have flown past quickly after the formation of our joint venture. As we expected there has been much work behind the scenes to pull all our processes together.
Our primary aim at the start was that it would be “business as usual” for our customers whilst we worked to integrate the different businesses. This was achieved with our clients seeing very little change on the ground and our usual excellent service.

Our first venture as Molecare Veterinary Services was the opening of two more Molecare Farmvet branches at Cullompton and Newton Abbot. Both branches are staffed by qualified SQP’s – Suitably Qualified Persons – who can dispense medicines. They will also run a fully stocked dispensary, all medicines are authorised by the farm vet before being dispensed.

One of our USPs is that we are now part of the overall Mole Valley Farmers service offering. As a veterinary practice we are unique in that we have access to a whole range of farm services. Already we have worked together alongside the Mole Valley Farmers Red Meat Team – this team delivers specialist advice and services to beef and sheep clients. We have been able to offer impartial health advice to several of their clients to ensure they were getting a complete service.
The Mole Valley Farmers Dairy Hygiene team supply services and products onto dairy farms to ensure the farms meet the milk hygiene standards – especially with regards to SCC and Bactoscan. We have worked together here to identify farms with hygiene issues and the joint approach has ensured a better service to the clients.

Within our own team we are working to develop our service offerings to our dairy, beef and sheep clients. In the last few months we have held successful dairy, sheep and equine evenings. On Feb 24th at Exeter we held our first Molecare Dairy Focus Group. This was a joint meeting with Mole Valley Feed Solutions. The group is a benchmarking discussion group using InterHerd to analyse farm recordings from NMR and CIS. The aim is to focus on different areas of dairy farm performance and to generate discussion on how to improve problem areas, being led by Nick Barradale.

So moving forward we feel we are well placed after a positive start. Over the next 12 months we will develop our dairy, beef and sheep services. We will be looking to generate growth by working alongside the Mole Valley Farmers stores and the Mole Valley Farmers service offerings. All this will mean a better service to our clients as we develop a larger veterinary offering with increasing levels of expertise and service.

Our aim now, after our period of consolidation is to grow our business. One of the exciting parts of the new company is the ability to work with the other service providers within Mole Valley Farmers. We have worked well with Mole Valley Feed Solutions on some of our dairy farms to deliver a better value service.